


a river flows backward (The Saga of the Eel-Giraffes)

by Mayhem10



Series: The Traveler's Corner [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, The Dresden Files - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Slice of Life, Why Is It Always Chicago?, Why Is It Always Harry?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 17:55:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16645022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mayhem10/pseuds/Mayhem10
Summary: What was it about the Windy City that said, ‘Hey! Super fond of unmitigated disaster and poor decision-making skills, especially if they come with a side of blatant and brazen violence in front of mundanes! Please, make yourself at home, random user of skeevy magic!'





	a river flows backward (The Saga of the Eel-Giraffes)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a side adventure for my story [ salespeople know (listening is the most important part)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16014068/chapters/37369736) because I love Tim Drake and I love Harry Dresden and I just want them to meet. So please enjoy this little foray into magical nonsense!

Sometimes Harry wondered why there were so many idiot practitioners running around Chicago instead of like, London or New York. What was it about the Windy City that said, ‘Hey! Super fond of unmitigated disaster and poor decision-making skills, _especially_ if they come with a side of blatant and brazen violence in front of mundanes! Please, make yourself at home, random user of skeevy magic!’

Ugh, he had been looking forward to grabbing a few pizzas and just chilling with Mouse and Mister tonight, not running all over the city chasing some sort of - snake monster? Eel giraffe? Stars and stones, he hated chimeras. Who looked at two animals and thought, ‘gee, I wonder what those would look like if I put them in a blender’?

There were at least two monsters running around that he’d found so far and his first tactic of shouting “ _fuego_ ” and hoping they burned to a crisp was proving woefully ineffective and his second tactic of shouting “ _pyrofeugo_ ” and hoping they burned to a crisp was also sucking majorly. Fire usually had _some_ kind of effect on creatures no matter where they were from (unless they were Cherufe. Or Firebirds. Or - actually scratch what he said before) but these things were impervious to whatever he tried to throw at them. 

He rounded the corner, charging full speed after one of the annoyances, when another lumbered into the street ahead. Another _fuego_ never hurt anyone (except when it totally did), so he fired off another one. Unlike its brothers though, _this_ eel-giraffe decided that it was personally offended by Harry’s attempt to incinerate it into tiny, tiny ash flakes and that the best defense was a very violent offense. 

It charged him like a hippo with rage issues.

The creature bore down on him, shrieking, and just as he raised his hand with a _defendarius_ spell on his lips, he was violently pulled away, tumbling into a small alleyway as the monster thundered past. He barely managed to keep his footing, dropping his blasting rod to catch himself against the wall.

“Hell’s bells!” Harry cursed as he whirled around. “What do you think you’re doing?”

A guy turned from where he was peering down the street. “Saving your life looks like.” 

Harry was surprised to see that his self-appointed rescuer was pretty damn young. He had the whole lean, mean fighting machine thing going on but Harry remembered the gangly limbs of his late teens and the kid definitely was still growing into his shoulders. Stupid kid moved like a freakin’ cat though, he thought to himself as the boy approached him, all confident and self-aware and not awkward, unlike Harry, who had tripped about every third step until he hit twenty-five.

“I had it handled,” he blustered. The kid looked at him skeptically, one eyebrow raised as he scanned him up and down. 

“You were throwing fireballs at them while running away. That isn’t exactly ‘handled,’” he said dryly. 

Harry could see where the guy may have gotten that _mistaken_ idea, but, “I was making a strategic retreat.”

“Right,” the kid drawled which, _rude_. 

“Look,” Harry said, leaning down to grab his blasting rod, “whatever, thanks I guess, but I need to figure out a way to stop these things before they rampage into a more populated area of town - I doubt they’re gonna hang around here forever. So unless you got some info about chimeras that I don’t know about, you should probably skedaddle back home.”

The kid looked at his blasting rod thoughtfully before checking down the street. Harry peered around the corner, and yep, the chimera was still there huffing and puffing around. Oh, and look, it was joined by two of its giant eel-giraffe friends! A eel-giraffe pack (A herd of eel-giraffe? What’s the plural of that?). Lovely. He needed to do something fast, before another civilian wandered by because he’d bet Murphy’s last cup of coffee the chimera would have no problem snacking on a passer-by.

“Can you do more with that than just make fireballs?” the guy asked, nodding toward his blasting rod.

“Of course!” Harry was genuinely offended. “Loads of things. What do you think I am, a party wizard?”

The kid rolled his eyes. “I don’t know what you are and I don’t particularly care, but if you want to get rid of these things then I might have a plan beyond trying to set everything on fire.”

“Kid, how old even are you?”

“Eighteen.” The kid gave him a look. “Not that that should matter.”

Harry’s first instinct was to say no, open a portal, and dump the kid somewhere safe. Who even was this guy? What crazy teenager saw monsters running around Chicago and just thought, ‘Huh, better look into that.’

So yeah, there was something very familiar stubbornness in the kid’s eyes, and yeah, he seemed _kinda_ capable, and so what if he’d already grasped the situation and come up with a plan, and - and -

Harry sighed. “Sure, what’ve you got.”

~~~

“Huh,” Harry said, watching the creatures slowly dissolve into a mixture of dirt, bones, and seaweed. “What d’you know.”

The kid tilted his head. “Golems. Interesting.”

When the kid had told Harry the plan, he had been skeptical. Understandably, he thought. But the issue was time sensitive and his inner Murphy was throwing a fit the longer the stupid monsters walked around the streets of Chicago so he’d thought, ‘hey, what the heck, might as well try it.’ If it didn’t pan out then he could send the kid on his merry way and call in reinforcements. 

A judicious use of _infringa_ to create a nasty few slip’n slides and one by one the eel-giraffes were herded to the river where a little _forzare_ assisted them over the edge. 

“So running water disrupts the – spell? – keeping them together?” The kid asked absently, as if thinking out loud but not really expecting an answer. 

Harry answered anyway. “Yeah, running water usually has a dampening effect on thaumaturgical energies, especially binding and animating spells. There has to be a constant flow of energy to the object formed and bound and rivers have their own direction of flow that interferes with an opposing force.”

There was a look in the kid’s eyes that reminded Harry uncomfortably of a certain green-eyed mobster when faced with something he wanted to take apart piece by piece. On the plus side, Marcone looked at Harry like that while this guy seemed more interested in the magical theory, so hey, probably a little bit on the whiter side of the moral spectrum. 

After making sure the last piece of eel-giraffe golem dissolved, the kid looked around like he was seeing where they were for the first time. “…I have no idea where I am.”

To be fair, they are a couple of miles from where they started and the route they took to the river was guided more by homicidal golems than the Chicago street system. And actually, the kid definitely wasn’t a local what with the accent. 

“You want a ride back home?” Harry offered. “It’s the least I can do after the help with the eel-giraffes.”

“Eel-giraffes?”

Awkward. “Yeah, you know…they looked like a giraffe with an eel head.” 

“Huh. Yeah, I guess I can see that. I thought they looked more like giraffe-lampreys if I’m honest.” 

Never mind, this was the best kid ever. Harry wanted to bring him home, stick him in a room with Bob and just watch the entertainment unfold. Clearly, he had a discerning mind.

“But yeah, a ride back would be great.” The kid grinned. “Thanks.” 

It took a while to get back to where Harry left the Blue Beetle at the beginning of this whole mess and the entire time the kid peppered him with questions about the intricacies of the spellwork needed to create a golem, not to mention questions that Harry couldn’t even begin to go about answering. Harry had really only ever studied magic so he hadn’t the slightest idea about ‘atomic manipulation’ or ‘nuclear transmutation.’ He doubted anyone in magical circles would be able to answer the kid’s questions to his satisfaction either.

When they arrived at the Blue Beetle, the kid stopped and, for the first time since he had pulled Harry out from under the eel-giraffe’s monster hooves, looked hesitant. 

C’mon, the Blue Beetle was a _little_ rough around the edges, sure, but did it really deserve that expression?

(…Probably. Yeah, no, nevermind.)

“This car is…very old.” Very observant, kid. Harry’s estimation of him was slowly lowering. 

“Yep. Newer cars have all the technology stuff. Get a strong enough wizard in one of those things and – ” he made a _kapoosh_ sound “ – deader than necromancer’s dearly deceased dog.” 

And the kid was off again, asking about why wizards would interfere with tech as he slid into the front seat, postulating different theories as to the biomechanical fields wizards might emit as opposed to vanilla mortals while they made their way to a neighborhood that Harry rarely had cause to visit and usually only when someone had lost something and needed some thaumaturgy done. 

“Oh, it’s just here,” the kid pointed. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Not a problem,” Harry said, pulling to a stop. “Least I could...do...”

The kid opened the door and looked back at him as he stepped out. “You can come in if you want,” he said, gesturing behind him. 

The distance echo of “ _fuck_ ” rang in the back of his mind and Harry braced himself as he opened his Sight. The store the kid gestured to, a rinky-dink run-down heap of a place, lit up like the bonfire they used to build on McCoy’s farm for Walpurgis Night, brighter even. Harry almost fell out of his car, squinting and probably looking like a total idiot as he stumbled his way to the curb.

“Okay, great,” the kid said with a bemused smile. “Just let me open up and you can take a look around.”

And Harry did his best to keep a straight face as he lost his freakin’ mind because he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the magical shed but he’d read a crap ton of books while avoiding his evil, mind-controlling demon of a guardian and this place was ringing some serious bells. Like, obscure bells in an old abandoned church, but the bells were still hanging out making some low-key music. Harry thought even Bob might not know what was going on here.

This kid was the Facilitator. 

_Shiiiiiiiit_. 

~~~

Harry left Traveler’s Corner with his dad’s old stage wand (he might have cried a few manly tears), Tim “The Kid” Drake’s phone number, and a sincere appreciation for new friends.

Especially when they help destroy evil chimeras. 

Suck it, eel-giraffes.


End file.
